Mooned

Cool time-lapse photo of last week’s lunar eclipse.

Like taking a bus

Dave Barry posted this item on his blog:

Hey –

I’m a flight attendant with Northwest Airlines… You’re gonna love this one.

Recently, Northwest reprimanded a flight attendant because she made a passenger put her lap dog back in its carrier during the flight.Until last month, this was the required action when a pet was removed from their carrier. With our October FAA Manual Update “Emotional Support Animals” are no longer required to be in carriers during peoples travels and if they are the size of a lapchild they can be held in the passengers lap through out all phases of flight. This in itself has most flight attendants saying…. what? so now anyone can have their pet in their lap for emotional support through out the flight??? better yet… WHAT contstitutes an “Emotional Support Animal”… and what authorization does someone need to carry this “ESA” with them on flights. Remember we are not talking about Dogs for the Blind or Monkeys for the Paralized. Spefically noted in the Update Pigs and Small Horses are to be allowed on board planes…. YES … SMALL HORSES? As my co-workers and I read this we asked ourselves, Who is going to clean up after the Quadriplegics pig and pony as we travel from Detroit to Tokyo??? and better yet where are we going to put the cleaned up items.We are Union Workers you know, and I know there is nothing in that last contract that requiring us to clean up after dogs, cats, pigs, monkeys or horses. Our contract negotiations are scheduled to begin in the next few months while pay cuts seem to be on the top of the list for Management requests, I’m thinking first you put me in the middle of the passengers and the Terrorists, but now you tell me I have to live with barn animals on my flight too??? God, I need to rethink what I do for a living.I’ve enjoyed reading your column through the years…. thought you might enjoy that.

NWA Flight Attendant

A cartridge generated a faulty number

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A computer error with a voting machine cartridge gave President George W. Bush 3,893 extra votes in a Gahanna precinct.

President Bush won Ohio by 136,000 votes so fixing the error wouldn’t change the election’s outcome.

Franklin County’s unofficial results gave Bush 4,258 votes to Democratic challenger John Kerry’s 260 votes in Precinct one-B.

Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Franklin County elections director Matthew Damschroder says Bush got 365 votes there.

Damschroder says he got calls Thursday from people who saw the error when reading poll results on the election board’s Web site.

Damschroder says after Precinct one-B closed, a cartridge from one of three voting machines at the polling place generated a faulty number at a computerized reading station.

AP via News Channel 5 (Cleveland)

Imagine that, a software flaw (must be a first)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — It had to happen. Things were just going too smoothly.

Early Thursday, as Broward County elections officials wrapped up after a long day of canvassing votes, something unusual caught their eye. Tallies should go up as more votes are counted. That’s simple math. But in some races, the numbers had gone … down.

It turns out the software used in Broward County can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward. Why a voting system would ever be designed to vote backward was a mystery to Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman. It had her on the phone late Wednesday with Omaha-based Elections Systems and Software.

Bad numbers showed up only in running tallies through the day, not the final one. Final tallies were reached by cross-checking machine totals and officials are confident they are accurate.

From the Palm Beach Post

Advice to Democratic Senators

“And anybody who thinks 51 percent is license to end the progressive income tax, chloroform Social Security, create a permanently troglodytic federal judiciary, invade Teheran, and generally take the national polity back to the 1890’s is betting heavy behind a low pair. Don’t fold. Don’t call. Raise.”

— Charles Pierce writing at Altercation

No time for that now

A dude shows up in a town in the old west, ties up his horse and settles in at the saloon for a beer. Soon he senses a lot of anxious activity. People are running here and there, closing shutters, pulling down shades, locking doors.

The dude asks the bartender, “What’s going on?”

The bartender replies — fear clearly etched in his voice — “Big Ed is coming!”

Not knowing what this means, the dude continues to sip his beer. Soon he sees emerging from a cloud of dust down the street a huge man riding on the back of a longhorn bull, whipping it with a live rattlesnake (think Mongo from Blazing Saddles, only bigger and uglier; or maybe Tex Cobb in Raising Arizona).

The huge man rides the bull to the front of the saloon, climbs off and knocks it cold with a punch. He bites the head off the rattlesnake and throws it aside. He walks into the saloon, shoves the bartender to the floor and drinks a huge beer in one swallow.

The dude, scared out of his wits, doesn’t know what to do. Running seems foolish. Hiding is impossible. Finally, in an act of desperation, he says to the most terrifying man he has ever seen, “C-c-can I b-b-buy you a beer?”

The man-monster looks at him, then says, “No time for that now. Big Ed is coming!”

And so the second Bush Administration begins.

Beware the demo

From AP via Wired News:

JACKSONVILLE, North Carolina — More than 4,500 votes have been lost in one North Carolina county because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. Scattered other problems may change results in races around the state.

Local officials said UniLect, the maker of the county’s electronic voting system, told them that each storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes.

In the kid court

Abstracts of recent decisions by Ian Frazier. An example:

A and B, siblings, on car trip, entered ill-advisedly into burping contest. Drinking soda was involved. B said new flavor of soda, tried by him for first time, was pretty good. A replied, “I’ll bet it’s really not.” This later construed as evidence of animus against B. Contest proceeded without further dispute. Burps of A and B roughly equal in quality, volume, etc. After ten minutes, A said she was bored. B then produced outstanding burp, which A let go by without comment. B, noting A’s silence, asked her opinion. Still receiving no answer, B said, “Hey, I complimented your burps.” A replied in a way seen as unforthcoming by B, who then put pressure on A’s seat belt until she screamed.

Court pulled over and refused to continue until A and B were silent; both enjoined to remain like that; contest suspended.

Hall of fame and Oscar-winner day

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Ike Turner is 73 today.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Art Garfunkel is 63.

Sam Shepard is 61. An inductee as a playwright into the Theatre Hall of Fame, Shepard was also nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for playing Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff.

Peter Noone (Herman of Herman’s Hermits) is 57. No, Peter isn’t in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Bill Walton is 52. He’s in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Tatum O’Neal is 41. Miss O’Neal won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar at age 10 for Paper Moon. Her new tell-all book is called A Paper Life.

Vivien Leigh (who died at age 53) was born on this date in 1913. Miss Leigh was selected as Best Actress twice — for Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind (opposite Clark Gable) and for Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (opposite Marlon Brando).

And Leonard Franklin Slye was born in Cincinnati on this date in 1911. As Roy Rogers he’s an inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the only person to be elected twice — as the King of the Cowboys and as a founder of the Sons of the Pioneers (”Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” “Cool Water”). Rogers died in 1998.